New Bums is the grudging match-up ofDonovan Quinn (Skygreen Leopards) and Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance, Comets on Fire, 200 Years, Rangda). They didn't like each other at first, but now make sweet and sour music together over the light of the magical Sterno. The ideas go back and forth between the two in what seems to be a true partnership. Their songs are all that: songs, with lyrics set in a space to speak to the human buried in you. People's music, with all the stark confessions, tall tales, bleak humors and punch lines the people can bear. The voices are two, spinning harmonies, both heavenly. Behind the acoustics and voices is lots of space, but there are a few extra instruments that come and go as the boys move from stately processional to street corner sing-around to bluesy weeper to low-rolling rock 'n roll and back again. This is guitars music - slide-guitar lines erupt in the dark night air and classical-tinged filigrees curl around the tarnished and rusting edges throughout. 

Picking their direction and floating along on a pair of acoustics, New Bums are the sound of Old Drunk America, dancing out of the shadows, coming forth again to stand in the light, in the hopes of repopulating those sad old single-occupancy hotels before they're all torn down. After releasing the "Slim Volume" single earlier this year, the duo is set to release debut full-length, Voices in a Rented Room, on February 18, 2021 via Drag City Records. Preview New Bums' sharp-cornered clarity below via Voices In A Rented Room's opening track, "Black Bough."